I just made a fresh install of my windows 7 home premium using my laptop's recovery disks (HP Pavilion dv6-2151cl) using minimal settings. After install, I set up "Program Data" and "Users" to my D partition to save space changing the folders in the registry. Then I updated windows (including W7 SP1), and installed all other programs.

After installing all other programs I noticed that the icons of all new programs (not included in the windows install) in "All Programs" had a blank sheet as icon and they don't do anything. Looked into "D:\Program Data\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs" in the windows explorer and the same is true there. All the shortcuts in C: and "D:\Users..." work both in the "Windows Explorer" and "All Programs".

Also I noticed that the shortcuts do display the right icons inside the "open" dialog boxes. And if I copy the shortcuts in "D:\Program Data..." to the desktop they also work as expected.

I checked file association for .lnk and it was OK, but also tried the registry fixers for this file association and they had no effect. There are no missing programs that I can tell in the "All Programs" menu, the just don't do anything if they lay in "D:\Program Data...".

Any thoughts on how to make Windows 7 treat shortcuts in "D:\Program Data..." as they should?

If you double click on the shortcut, what happens?
–
soandosApr 9 '12 at 4:11

I must be tired, because I can't comprehend this question at the moment.. xD Also, by 'Program Data' I assume you mean the AppData folders, which are set in your system environment variables.. should those be changed accordingly? Although, that would adversely effect some other programs / processes
–
ekajApr 9 '12 at 4:52

When I double click on the shortcuts located in "D:\Program Data\..." nothing happens. But if I double click on shortcuts located in "D:\Users\..." or "C:\Program Data\..." they work as expected
–
KevinApr 9 '12 at 15:03